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To meet the difficulty we must make a close examination of the
nature of Man in the Intellectual; perhaps, though, it is better
to begin with the man of this plane lest we be reasoning to Man
There from a misconception of Man here. There may even be some
who deny the difference.
We ask first whether man as here is a Reason-Principle different
to that soul which produces him as here and gives him life and
thought; or is he that very soul or, again, the [yet lower] soul
using the human body?
Now if man is a reasonable living being and by "living being" is
meant a conjoint of soul and body, the Reason-Principle of man is
not identical with soul. But if the conjoint of soul and body is
the reason-principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality,
seeing that it is only when soul and body have come together that
the Reason-Principle so constituted appears?
The Reason-Principle will be the foreteller of the man to be, not
the Man Absolute with which we are dealing but more like his
definition, and not at that indicating his nature since what is
indicated is not the Idea that is to enter Matter but only that
of the known thing, the conjoint. We have not yet found the Man
we are seeking, the equivalent of the Reason-Principle.
But- it may be said- the Reason-Principle of such beings must be
some conjoint, one element in another.
This does not define the principle of either. If we are to state
with entire accuracy the Reason-Principles of the Forms in Matter
and associated with Matter, we cannot pass over the generative
Reason-Principle, in this case that of Man, especially since we
hold that a complete definition must cover the essential manner
of being.
What, then, is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling,
inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the
Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being or merely a
maker of that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that
act of making?
The living being corresponds to a reasoning life in the
Reason-Principle; man therefore is a reasoning life: but there is
no life without soul; either, then, the soul supplies the
reasoning life- and man therefore is not an essence but simply an
activity of the soul- or the soul is the man.
But if reasoning soul is the man, why does it not constitute man
upon its entry into some other animal form?
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